This State Street in Madison. The city has had a huge uptick in violent crime and the curmudgeon mayor is focused on cabs cruising State Street, which they are not supposed to do. Someone should give him a fucking fiddle.

It's the sort of thing liberals once abhorred -- the use of the criminal law for political persecution.

There has already been one felony conviction, and a plea deal. Three more are going through the court system right now. Was that persecution? Conservatives think this DA was supposed to just look away at what he found even when laws were broken? So much for the law and order party.

Aww c'mon, Leslyn. You don't really see the Professor as "grim," do you?

Aww c'mon Patrick, you were apparently writing while Althouse was "having fun" putting up her previous two posts.

Grim AND sensitive. (snarky, too)

I think "lust" is a bit strong, Prof, but whatever floats your boat.

Why would I care if that were my name instead of Walker's? Like I said--irrelevant. The fun is the chalk drawing. Anyway, I was in law enforcement for many years--lots of people wanted worse than jail. Ehhh. Nothing personal.

Glad it's been a good year for you garage, but your game in here has seriously suffered. I was in Madison a couple of weeks ago, I looked for this sort of thing and couldn't find any. So we went out on the lake instead.

You know the slavery thing must be in the more recent DNC playbooks as it shows up nt he weirdestplaces.

There's a video out there of some guy cursing Allen West (in front of kids, from what I can figure out) and he is questioned by the videographer... and he starts talking about slavery.

What?

ANd I can't remember them all, but it seems like that is the pattern these days. Sort of like when "gravitas" showed up in all the Dem / lefty comments and speeches back in one of the Bush elections. Weird.

So what is the love affair with the left for the slavery meme all of a sudden? (The guy above was nonplussed when informed that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Not to mention that the Dems were more opposed to the Civil Rights Act than the Republicans. Ask Algore.)

Got your panties in a wad over slavery? Go to Somalia and the Sudan and do something about it.

I have had the same sense of mental vertigo about liberals' attachment to principle that Ann describes.

The most appallingly bigoted things that I ever hear (racism; homophobia; sexism; prejudice against Jews, evangelical Christians, and Mormons) come from the mouths of self-identified liberals/progressives. Liberals once argued that equality before the law meant the equal application of legal processes, and now liberals want to ignore laws that get in the way of what they want. Liberals once argued that the First Amendment requires us to allow Nazis to parade in Skokie, but now they talk about using law and regulation to force Fox News off cable systems and throw Rupert Murdoch into jail.

Liberalism/progressivism has become a hollow shell. Principle seems to have lost out to tribalism--i.e., cheering for your team, right or wrong. And the team's only real cause is winning the power to tell other people how they must live. I think that's why some liberals envy Communist China's leaders and why others want to control the size of your soft drink.

Freeman Hunt: Someone should set the slave guy to doing chores, telling him that he is to continue working until he emancipates himself. Probably would not take long for him to decide that freedom is pretty cool.

Knowing the type, I have a feeling it would be very hard to get him to do any actual work.

Graffiti artists (whether working in temporary or permanent media) never can spell. Our resident Maoists at UC/Berkeley (the folks behind Revolution Books) were prolific of graffiti, but they misspelled something every time. If you're going to "light a prairie fire for revolution," it's as well to be able to spell "prairie." And similarly, here, if you're going to call out "villains," it does help if you can spell "villain."

Someone meaner than I would probably say that this is what you get out of a unionized public education system. But I wouldn't do that.